Adelphi Faculty Take on the World

“Adelphi University faculty members have vibrant connections around the world and proudly bring this experience and knowledge to the Adelphi University community,” said Shannon Harrison, director of the Center for International Education. “To this end, the Center for International Education is pleased to launch this new interactive map documenting faculty international engagement and announce the recipients of the 2019 International Faculty Development Grants.”

The map was a collaboration between Harrison and Daryl Gordon, Ph.D., associate dean of the Ruth S. Ammon School of Education, as part of a Presidential Fellows project. Red “pins” are placed on locations around the world where one or more faculty members have a research specialization or partnership. When a user clicks on the pin, they are taken to a list of the faculty members involved in that particular locale.

“The international audit demonstrated that there is broad global engagement across Adelphi’s faculty members,” said Dr. Gordon. “However, there was no mechanism to share this engagement within the Adelphi community or with the public. The inclusion of an international experience section on the faculty profiles, along with the interactive map, provides a much-needed way to share faculty engagement and creates opportunities to collaborate on initiatives.”

“Adelphi University values the international experience our faculty brings to the classroom,” said Harrison. “The map and these grants are designed to showcase this knowledge and further internationalize the Adelphi experience.”

Here are the awardees and the projects their grants will fund:

• Kees Leune, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Dr. Leune will develop an international institutional partnership with Tilburg University, where he received his Ph.D., and Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS) in the Netherlands with the goal of establishing faculty and student exchanges and research collaborations in the areas of data science, cybersecurity and scientific computing, as well as a future faculty-led study abroad course for computer science students.
• Brian A. Rose, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Theatre, will import his successfully produced play, Living Newspaper, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe—the largest theater festival in the world. The play tells the true story of the progressive Living Newspaper Unit of the Federal Theatre Project and its creator, Hallie Flanagan Davis, who stood up to a racist Congress during the Great Depression. This summer Dr. Rose will attend the festival in preparation for bringing a cast of Adelphi alumni and current students to perform in the summer of 2020.
• For over a decade, Katherine Fiori, Ph.D., associate professor and department chair in the Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, has collaborated with Dr. Oliver Huxhold, senior research scientist at the Deutsches Zentrum für Altersfragen (DZA; German Centre of Gerontology) in Berlin on researching links between social relationships and health in older adults. The two will now be able to work face to face at DZA and at Adelphi, where Dr. Huxhold will be a guest lecturer in Dr. Fiori’s psychological research class and will advise Dr. Fiori’s doctoral student workgroup about opportunities to work with DZA data and visit the DZA.
• In 2016, English Professor Lahney Preston-Matto, Ph.D., introduced her Literary Cities spring-semester course in which students study the literature of a different city or cities and then travel there over spring break. She and Michael Matto, Ph.D., associate professor of English and a specialist in the Germanic literature of Anglo-Saxon England, will scout a Viking sagas iteration of the course in Iceland, Norway and Denmark. They will also visit the American College of Norway, one of Adelphi’s international institutional partners.